MMA vs Taiji Fight

Discussion in 'Kung Fu' started by icefield, May 4, 2017.

  1. SWC Sifu Ben

    SWC Sifu Ben I am the law

    That's one of the big problems with the traditionalist schools, and even a lot of the traditional-trying-to-be-modern schools. So many people are training for the vague contexts of "fighting" and "self defence," and often with very little knowledge of what either entails, that they use that to excuse their current emphasis, the emphasis the art has had for a long time, when other tools may exist. For example I use a lot of the wing chun entries to enter into the clinch because hitting people in the face is not the best idea in the specific context(s) I'm training most for. Most wing chun folks tend to look down on that by calling it non-traditional or ineffective (more excuses), yet I found John and I had oddly similar techniques in several cases because we have a similar focus.

    The tools are often there, people just may be ignorant to their use and usefulness.
     
    Last edited: May 13, 2017
  2. Tobyk

    Tobyk New Member

    That's a good question: is Taichi on its own an effective method of self-defence?
    From a few years of learning Taichi from a guy originally from Hong Kong, I learnt how to "dance" the form, basic push hands and some weapons. I was not taught things such as how to sink my weight properly, or how to defend against someone throwing punch combinations, or how to defend against someone trying to throw me to the ground, or someone grabbing my shirt with one hand and punching me with the other, or anything remotely useful. It was all make-believe stuff. Some students told me that they believed that just by doing the form repeatedly for years, and doing push hands, they could defend themselves. I can't believe they were actually serious. Maybe it would indeed be effective against geriatric attackers or people so drunk they'd fall over by themselves.

    How can you do self-defence when you are not even taught how to punch properly? The only punch I remember in the Yang form is the "parry and punch" (could be others, but I can't quite remember). Yes, I realise that punching is not the only method of striking, but still. There is no punching or other striking against bags or mitts, let alone trying to tag a moving opponent. I was not taught about creating/reducing distance, I was not taught footwork for combat, I was not taught how to generate power in strikes. I was not taught how to deal with a single punch or other strike coming at me at full pace, let alone combinations. I understand that this is not necessary if Taichi is taught purely as a method for health and longevity, but so many people really believe that the slow, flowing movements will somehow magically become effective when someone attacks them. Please!

    If I used the Taichi I was taught, I'd end up just like "Grandmaster" Wei Lei vs Xu Xiaodong: beaten to a pulp in 10 seconds by someone who knew even just a bit of boxing.

    In my opinion, the Taiji that I was taught is useless for combat. I can't speak for other Taichi practitioners, and would love to hear what some of them have to say about using Taichi techniques in fighting situations, or during live sparring sessions against someone throwing full power, full pace strikes or takedowns.

    Look, I don't disrespect traditional styles or any styles. I'm personally interested in finding out what has worked and what hasn't. For centuries, the Chinese have believed in the effectiveness of mystical, so-called internal arts. Suddenly, a chap like Xu Xiaodong comes along and destroys grandmaster Wei Lei in 10 seconds. Yes, Wei Lei is obviously a fake, but the challenge is open to all other traditional stylists, fake or not. I think this is amazing because Xu Xiaodong is showing China and the rest of the world that you can do all the cloud hand moves or push hands you want for 20 years, but if during those 20 years you haven't regularly practised facing someone with even rudimentary skills throwing full power strikes who's really determined to hit you or take you down, then good luck when you actually have to defend yourself!
     
  3. Son of Putrid

    Son of Putrid New Member

    Fight? It was the same as the scraps I used to have in the school playground when I was a teenager in the seventies.Same kind of injuries,just superfical.I would suggest that the MMA guy would have got mashed if he fought Dan Docherty when Dan was in his prime.

    I have practiced Taiji for a couple of decades and in all honesty most people,myself included,who practice the art are not really interested in fighting.If they wanted to learn how to fight they would be signing up for MMA,boxing or Muay Thai.

    All this "contest" proves is that the MMA guy is a bit of a scrapper and the Taiji "master"should have had a few more fights during his formative years.
     
  4. Hannibal

    Hannibal Cry HAVOC and let slip the Dogs of War!!! Supporter

    Someone got starched after being punched - yeah that's a fight. In fact it looks like pretty much every city centre fight on a friday

    Possibly, but if most taiji practitioners were like Dan we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place

    I would say that extends to most martial artists period

    Thats was the whole point the "MMA guy" was making in the first place

    The taiji guy sucked at taiji too if we are talking about what it showed us
     
  5. Tobyk

    Tobyk New Member

    Man, you must have attended a very rough school! The video clearly shows poor Wei Lei laying there and getting pounded to the head by Xu Xiadong maybe a dozen times before the incompetent ref steps in. He was probably only a strike or two from getting knocked unconscious. Thanks goodness they were only superficial injuries!

    A fight to me is when people engage in combat. So even though this was very one-sided, IMO it was still a fight. But let's not get bogged down by semantics!

    The fight proves that an ill-prepared, possibly unfit, and obviously very self-deluded person stacks the odds against himself when knowingly taking on someone with some practical skills. I understand that Xu Xiaodong is a self-taught MMA fighter. He'd probably get knocked out or submitted by many fighters around the world. He doesn't deny this. He's just saying that in his opinion, traditional methods of training are don't stack up favourably compared to modern training methods when it comes to being effective in combat.

    I don't know who Dan Docherty is/was. Please enlighten me: from your comment, he is/was a Taiji person of some considerable skill. Did you train with him? Would you know if he trained only in Taiji, or did he have other skills? Is there evidence that he had fights (sparring or otherwise) against people with other skills? (Boxers, wrestlers, whatever). I'm interested to know whether he used only Taiji techniques and whether they were effective.

    I understand what you're saying about Taiji practitioners not interested in fighting. When I was learning it, I didn't want to be a fighter either (and still don't). But as my previous post stated, I'd like to know if Taiji is actually effective for self defence. I'd like to seek clarification when you mentioned that Wei Lei "should have had more fights in his formative years." As I understand it, there is contact sparring at all in Taiji. The closest thing to fighting is actually push hands (I know, I know, it's not fighting at all, but an exercise in learning redirection, rooting, sensitivity, and other aspects of which I'm probably ignorant.)

    So in your opinion, without the practice of sparring in Taiji, how could Wei Lei have gained more fighting experience in his formative years?

    It's very possible that I was either taught Taiji by someone who held back information from me, or that I was trying to learn from the wrong person. In light of this, during your decades of Taiji training, besides the empty-hand forms, push hands, and weapons forms, is there any other aspect of training that you do in regards to self-defence? If not, then why do you believe that your Taiji techniques would be effective when put in a situation where you'd have to defend yourself? Or is the focus on your training not combat-oriented at all, and instead the practice is for mostly health benefits?

    I'm not trying to attack you or Taiji in general. It's OK if you don't want to answer. I'm just trying to understand how Taiji works for self-defence.

    Thanks

    T.
     
  6. Hannibal

    Hannibal Cry HAVOC and let slip the Dogs of War!!! Supporter

  7. Hannibal

    Hannibal Cry HAVOC and let slip the Dogs of War!!! Supporter

    Speaking for myself I can only say the taiji I have done has helped my wrestling and fighting immensely....but then again i could fight well BEFORE that so it isn;t much of a metric I suppose

    I have splashed hands with Sifu Arnold Tayam on several occasions and he annihilated me in push hands - his energy sensitivity is unreal

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OhFd69-p10&t=24s

    I am also under no illusions that he can fight...when you spend your training focused on combat you tend to notice things in people
     
  8. Matt F

    Matt F Valued Member

    If a person can fight to some degree, they can fight to some degree. Full stop.
    Any stylist who actually has fights....gets better at fighting.
    It's the actual fights that are the truth. Nothing else.
    Each individuals experience of their fights is theirs.

    Those clips clearly show for anyone who wants to see it, and those that don't want to see it won't I guess.....that during the actual fight they just look like two guys fighting. It just looks like some variant of some kind of full contact fight, be it boxing, kickboxing...whatever. The things that work are the just the things that work.
    The demo looks nothing like it. None of the things in the demo are done in the fight. It's chalk and cheese.
    Demos mean nothing. What happens in actual fights is the truth.
    Loads demo one way....fight another.
    Lots always demo or are scripted. But don't actualy fight or show themselves unscripted.
    If they did...guess what?
    It would just be guys fighting again looking like guys fightings.
    All the magic dust ,just falls away.
     
  9. Hannibal

    Hannibal Cry HAVOC and let slip the Dogs of War!!! Supporter

    I have used Taiji live and it looked exactly like it should....but then I have trained in Taiji that was geared towards combat. Truth be told it was hard to tell if it was Taiji or highly refined Ju Jitsu, but the fact i used an uproot and sail is indicative

    If you don't know you don't know....and if you don't want to know you can't be told
     
  10. Dan Bian

    Dan Bian Neither Dan, nor Brian

    Your understanding is misinformed, I'm afraid. Tai Chi, taught for martial purpose, includes free-sparring, bag/pad work and a range of other partner drills - of which push-hands is only one.

    As I said above, bag work, pad work, partner drills training applications (similar to how judoka practice throws in isolation before moving into randori) and eventually bringing these skills together into a free sparring environment.
     
  11. Son of Putrid

    Son of Putrid New Member

    Tobyk wrote
    Just an average UK school in the early seventies.Fighting was quite normal in those days and it was mainly one on one and I can't recall teachers ever stopping it.What we were doing was a crude form of MMA,long range striking,covering,clinch,use of knees,elbows etc,going to ground,and ground and pound.Its just a natural way of fighting.

    Taiji will certainly teach you some useful skills but just doing form work and push hands won't prepare you for a fight.I think the video of the MMA/Taiji fight shows the master clearly wasn't used to contact and didn't have a clue how to cover against strikes from the outside position.Unless you have contact and a certain level of risk in training you are never going to be effective in a fight.

    Hannibal has provided some info on Dan Docherty.
     
  12. Fish Of Doom

    Fish Of Doom Will : Mind : Motion Supporter

    I only have very rudimentary experience with Taiji proper, but my Sifu was once asked about about more or less that very same thing (iirc specifically if two man forms were the Taiji equivalent of sparring), and, paraphrasing, his reply was along the lines of "nope, if you want to train Taiji fighting, glove up, helmets on, and start hitting each other".

    More generally, there is literally no reason why Taiji people can't spar. Most who I've seen just don't seem to want to (I've known my Sifu to have had to suspend a martial Taiji seminar due to lack of interest, and it broke my bloodthirsty heart :( ), and on top of that, many may think that they would be able to fight just from being good at doing solo movements, or that they would be able to instinctively and spontaneously express segments of forms in a fight just from doing them solo (which is a gigantic caliber of dumb, and a blight upon many schools that do styles which employ forms, not just Taiji).

    By way of analogy: Although boxing has no kicks, and thus they are not trained, nothing categorically forbids a boxer from kicking someone in a real fight, nor from doing "real-fighting-oriented" training drills incorporating kicking along with their boxing skills; it's just not done because it's not a part of boxing competition, so there's no reason to do it in boxing training, and it's likely that a given pure boxer will have difficulty kicking effectively, or at least proficiently, with no training. Many Taiji people (although this is not exclusive to Taiji) seem not to consider sparring or fighting as parts of Taiji training (although most of us would argue that this is a dumb thing), so they neither spar nor fight (this is a dumb thing), and so not only do they not have any framework through which to properly interpret, train, use, and refine the actually relevant skills arising from their formal technique training (both motor skills and specific actions or types of actions), but their training will also impart no notion at all of what actually goes on in a fight (even the fact itself that someone is trying to hurt them, let alone how to go about stopping them and/or returning the favour), so where someone like Hannibal or Dan Docherty can actually "fight the other guy" rather than trying to randomly "use Taiji" (equally applicable to varying degrees to "use Karate", etc), with the Taiji training contributing to their balance, their efficiency, to being able to exert or receive force in specific ways, etc, the non-sparring Taiji peep, if he/she has no fighting experience nor instinct, may instead have some notion of trying to recreate a movement from a form or some other form of, effectively, simply moving his body instead of acting on the opponent's, and eat a knuckle sandwich while trying to figure out how to get under their arm to trip them with cloud hands or single whip.

    /.02c
     
  13. aikiMac

    aikiMac aikido + boxing = very good Moderator Supporter

    Are you sure English is not your first language? When you write things like that, I almost cry tears of joy at how beautiful it is. :cry:
     
  14. El Medico

    El Medico Valued Member

    OK, I wrote-
    .
    so you wrote-
    Well,it sure ain't just an entering movement in this- vid-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCF_U7BpYRU

    Your Hung must be different than mine-here's what I said before-
    In the Fu hok I learned this "prayer hand" is executed extending the arms from in front of the diaphragm forward at an upward angle as the body explodes in-not really a covering move at all.
     
  15. icefield

    icefield Valued Member

    Since you like the quote function so much here you go from the man himself why he developed the guard
    For one of his wrestling students training at an mma gym
    Another one back when it was called the big fist strategy

     
    Last edited: May 24, 2017
  16. El Medico

    El Medico Valued Member

    That is the direct result of Englishman in the mid 60s to early 70s attempting the American practice of "truckin'".Sad to say I've yet to see any pull it off correctly,even the long haired English lads I knew. Must be some inherent cultural block.

    Yeah,well this isn't exactly news to any CMA practitioners who practice for pragmatic execution.Which is why some obvious no nothing getting trashed in a few seconds is no concern to me,whatever his jive claims.

    It also shows anyone can call themselves "master" in anything and shows how meaningless titles/ranks are.

    To use TC in a combative (sport or "street") you have to do all the stuff everyone else does PLUS you have to spend A LOT of time in specialized training of TC mechanics,push hands,nei-gungs,etc.What DB says----
    everything Fish said!
     
  17. Dead_pool

    Dead_pool Spes mea in nihil Deus MAP 2017 Moi Award

  18. cloudz

    cloudz Valued Member

  19. icefield

    icefield Valued Member

    Just to play devil’s advocate, wasn’t nick a full time ufc fighter before he found tai chi?

    If my memory serves me right he did hung gar, got his backside handed to him in an MMA gym, did mma for years alongside the rough house guys as part of the ultimate fighter show, then retired started tai chi.

    He is hardly a typical tai chi guy, bit like claiming Max Chen (William son) as repping tai chi in full contact fights when the truth is a little bit more complex
     
  20. cloudz

    cloudz Valued Member

    Is there a point to any of that ?
    But sure I'm well aware some people want to keep to beating up traditional guys they know they can beat up. Or that Nick is not a traditional tai chi guy. However you might choose to define that mess.

    Some of us are more interested in other things, than some style vs. style BS or sport vs. tradition BS.

    Before I trained with Nick I had also trained with Neil Rossiak who trained a bunch of San Shou/Sanda fighters as well as Sami Berik. Neil also competed in the earliest NHB in this country - all based off of Cheng Ting Hungs Wu style tai chi chuan system out of HK. So I know what a traditional system does to prepare for full contact and I have a wide experience and knowledge of traditional tai chi chuan myself.

    Fighting isn't re inventing the wheel and you are more than smart enough to know that mate.

    I'm going into a process where I will be putting together a taichi sanda program and class. If you want to quibble who's doing what and why, what they did before and all that jazz, be my guest. Come down some time and train with us!

    All the best
     
    Last edited: May 25, 2017

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